Saturday, May 28, 2016

West Often Deals with Those Lacking Moral Scruples but Not Often with Those like Putin Who Flaunt This Lack Openly, Yakovenko Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, May 28 – David Satter
makes an important point when he says that the West is “not accustomed to deal
with people who operate in a [moral] vacuum” of the kind the characterizes the
leadership of Russia today, Moscow commentator Igor Yakovenko notes; but he
suggests that the West does have that experience but not so often in political
life.

In a commentary on the Kasparov.ru
portal, he argues that after Georgia and Ukraine, no Western leader can fail to
see that Vladimir Putin and his regime are lacking in any moral scruples and
will do anything they can to advance their own power by any means whatsoever (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=574886A35D060).

The American journalist, Yakovenko
says, is wrong to think that there aren’t people in the West “who operate
without moral scruples” and with whom political leaders must deal.In fact, the Russian commentator says, “in
the upper reaches of business, there are many such people … [and] the moral
vacuum in which they operate is described” in many novels.

He cites the characters of Arthur
Hailey’s 1990 novel, “The Evening News,” who are quite prepared to sacrifice
every moral principle including respect for freedom of speech for profit, and
suggests that those characters have come to life in the upper reaches Putin’s
Russia today.

Indeed, Yakovenko continues, Deputy
Media Minister Aleksey Volin, in explaining why the leadership of RBC had to be
changed, uses arguments which are almost word for word taken from the sleazy
characters presented in Hailey’s novel of a quarter of a century ago.It almost appears that Hailey was describing
Russian political life now.

“Both mentally and morally, the real
Russian Volin and the American literary figure [from Hailey’s novel] are twins,”
he writes.“Both the one and the other
exist within a moral vacuum” and act accordingly.

There does not exist any instrument
to “measure the percent of moral idiots I society as a whole and among those in
power in particular,” but “most likely, the Volins form a majority among
Russians in places of power and at the top of Russian business.” Yakovenko says
that he personally can’t rate the share of such people “in the power structures
and business of the West.”

“But the chief distinguishing
feature between the two is notin the
share of moral idiots,” he argues, although this is an important indicator and
it would not be a bad idea to learn how to measure it.”The real difference is that social mechanisms
which make it “extremely difficult” for people like Hailey’s hero “to say
publicly what he says privately” do not exist in Russia.

There, Yakovenko points out, Russian officials
are constantly “showing their moral idiotism in public, aren’t ashamed of doing
so, and do not suffer as a result.”

In the West but not in Russia, concerns
about reputation keep people from flaunting their lack of moral principles even
if they don’t have them.“And even if
this is recognized as hypocrisy, one must welcome it” for the simple reason
that “as is well-known, ‘hypocrisy is the tribune which vice pays to virtue.’”

What is also striking and potentially very
important for the future, Yakovenko points out, is that Russian culture as a
whole has been moving in a positive direction in this regard over the last
century while the position of the Russian ruling stratum, at least in the last
two decades, has been moving in exactly the opposite one.

This divergence, he continues, is “camouflaged”
by repeated official statements that the Russian people overwhelmingly support
the Putin regime. But that is a complete myth, put out by the elite with the same
lack of moral scruple or concern with accuracy that informs all of its other
actions.

As a result, a gulf is opening between a
regime totally unconcerned about morality and a population which increasingly albeit
slowly is very much concerned about that. And “the more rapidly this gulf will
be overcome, the less painful and bloody it will be, including for the
representatives of those in power.”

“Unfortunately,” Yakovenko says, “the
growing degradation of people in power is keeping them from understanding that.”